Logotherapy

Logotherapy (healing through meaning, derived from ancient Greek “logos“) also is referred to as the Third Viennese School of psychotherapy, following Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud) and Individual Psychology (Alfred Adler). Unlike its predecessors, therapeutic work does not primarily focus on the client´s past to unveil hidden causes for their suffering, but takes its main interest in their resources and possibilities to master it at present, with the future in mind. The key element is the search for meaning, an intrinsically human aspiration, which is individually expressed through the realisation of the best possibility at a given situation. Assigned to the humanistic theories, Logotherapy is an empirically-based method and brief therapy, offering help to self-help with an application area spreading from curative to preventive, from clinical practices to bereavement counselling, life evaluation, crisis prevention, life planning and company leadership.

Prof. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), clinical psychiatrist and neurologist, mapped out that regardless of circumstances, any catastrophe can be transformed into triumph. When both bestowed with the gift of freedom of Will and burdened with responsibility, we choose our attitude towards current happenings and our actions to deal with them, manifesting at any point who we want to be: victim or co-creator of our Lives. Based on a three-dimensional concept of Man (physical – psychological – spiritual), we can struggle both physically and mentally with severe suffering and existential issues, but yet face them dignifiedly by learning to distinguish the unchangeable fatal, from the do-able possible.

All his life V. Frankl was taken by the question Why does one stay healthy?. Years before his deportation to a concentration camp during Would War two, he got to the core of a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

How stands for the given facts and circumstances, “the blow of fate” which is to be accepted. Why encompasses the individual spiritual value, the meaningful worth striving for, e.g. for the sake of another human being, a philosophical or religious conviction, a task yet unfinished. This motive of meaning does not overwhelm but inspires and carries through the How. He who answers a problematic request of his existence with a specific “Yes to life, in spite of everything“ and does not deny or ignore the task, find support in their stance (=Haltung). Thus we come to realize the indestructibility of our dignity, gain self-knowledge and develop self-actualisation.